By Plutonium Page
"Embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of life to create a stem cell."
-- George W. Bush, Second 2004 Presidential Debate
In the middle of the Terri Schiavo media circus, a surprising item on the GOP congressional agenda has slipped under the radar. No, it's not about banning stem cell research. In fact, they're discussing changes to Bush's stem cell research policy.
The New York Times has the story (
(the bold emphasis is mine):
Representative Michael N. Castle, the Delaware Republican who is leader of a group of party moderates who have been pushing to ease restrictions on financing stem cell research, said the leadership pledged to take up some version of a proposal to allow federally financed research on stem cells taken from leftover frozen embryos from fertility clinics.
Under a policy set by President Bush in August 2001, federal research financing is available only for the finite number of stem cell lines in use before that time, a number initially thought to be about 60 but now thought to be 22.
[snip]
Mr. Castle said the Republican leadership agreed in meetings on Wednesday and Thursday of last week to consider the proposal. Those same days the House was racing to enact emergency legislation in the case of Terri Schiavo, the critically brain-damaged Florida woman whose feeding tube was disconnected last week. In contrast to the Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case, adoption of the stem cell proposal would be a setback for those who argue for the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.
There's more below the fold.
Of course, the usual critics are speaking up. Note the statement in bold (my emphasis):
The proposal - in a bill introduced by Mr. Castle and Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado - focuses the ethical debate over stem cell research on the narrower subject of leftover embryos created in efforts at conception and destined to be discarded. Proponents of the proposal contend that the leftover embryos, which could be used only with the permission of the couple, have already passed the point where a decision has to be made between life and destruction.
Social conservatives argue, however, that such embryos are nascent human lives and should not be used for research.
"You will have to destroy the embryos, so obviously there is a moral issue involved," said Dr. David Prentice, a fellow at the Family Research Council, a conservative organization.
Dr. Prentice argued that the fruits of such research were yet to be proven. "If you can't even show the results would be useful," he asked, "why even address the ethical question?"
Although Dr. Prentice has impressive credentials, the fact that he's a fellow for an organization that publishes books like this casts doubt on his objectivity on any issue. Also, he's an occasional consultant for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity... hmm. Sound familiar?
more here on the issue. I'm glad you're putting it in this context. i consider it part of the Schiavo fallout, with Republicans in Congress scrambling to reestablish some reality credentials.
Posted by: DemFromCT | March 27, 2005 at 13:22
One aspect about the "life" debate I haven't seen discussed much is the difference between concentrating on one "sacred" life versus looking at people as a whole.
It is easy to isolate Terri Schiavo and talk about the sanctity of life and the "culture of life" in a way that is at once personalized and abstract. Personalized, obviously, in the person of Terri Schiavo. But abstract, also, because her life is abstracted coimpletley out of the context of the shared life of everyone in the country.
For instance, Terri's parents aren't paying for her care, and as a nation we could obviously not pay for keeping every single person alive on artificial life support until something gives out irreparably. Nor is the GOP proposing that we do so, certainly not with tax dollars, and I am willing to bet the farm that Frist doesn't think the family HMO should pay for it either. So what are we really talking about here? It is a symbolic discussion with no relevance at all to the kinds of probelms that we send people to Washington to solve.
We really need to spend more time putting things BACK in context. No discussion should be allowed to take place in this kind of artificial, abstract, contextless way. Every political choice has to be connected to the lost opportunities that it will create. Otherwise, it looks like a set of discrete choices with no consequences.
Go to Iraq? Forget rebuilding our own infrastructure.
Eliminate the estate tax? Forget making Social Security solvent.
Massive drug benefit with payoffs to HMOs? Forget getting control of Medicare costs.
Leave farm subsidies as they are? Forget weaning Afghan farmers off poppy because they have nothing they can grow economically in its place.
Every choice involves not doing something else, and every choice is part of a context.
Posted by: Mimikatz | March 27, 2005 at 13:44
Mimikatz--you're 100% correct about context. In most political/policy debates with the rightwing, context should be our friend. Unfortunately, liberals/progressives aren't always that adept at providing a context, or as others might say, "telling a story." Some of our better rhetoricians do, especially the populists, but overall, we're not that great.
That's one area where I think Reid is clearly superior to Daschle, in that he's so far been fairly good at putting things into a context that's adventagious to us, rather than quibbling about details in the context (or frame) offered by the Repubs.
Oh, Page, thanks for saving me the self-serving effort to link to the piece about Jeb's doctor's ties to the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. Anybody tied to that outfit is almost certainly 100% opposed to any kind of stem cell research, since they even advocate adoptions of embryos.
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